When international journalists went to Eritrea’s capital Asmara in the early 1990s, they painted a picture of clear blue skies, pleasant temperatures at altitude, stunning Italian colonial architecture, great espresso, and hopes for the newly independent country. Eritrea had just won independence from Ethiopia after a 30-year civil war (1961-91) and was officially recognized as a country in 1993.
The hopes quickly faded. Isaias Afwerki, who led the fight for independence, became president – and he is still there, ruling by decree. Despite ratification of a new Constitution in 1997, it was never applied. After locking up critical politicians and journalists in 2001, international media were banned too. The country’s only university was shut down in 2001. The tiny Horn of Africa state still has no parliament, no free elections, no independent justice system, no free press or civil society space, no religious freedom, no freedom of expression.
Institutionalized repression
“The country’s human rights situation remains severe, marked by widespread and systemic violations,” states Sudanese UN Special Rapporteur on Eritrea Mohamed Abdelsalam Babiker in his most recent report to the UN Human Rights Council. “This is evident in the lack of democratic governance and rule of law, severe restrictions on fundamental freedoms, indefinite national service, arbitrary and prolonged detention, and enforced disappearances. These patterns sustain a system of institutionalized repression, fuelled by impunity and lack of accountability.” Babiker says there are reasonable grounds to believe “crimes against humanity are ongoing in Eritrea”.
“The people do not have any sustainable future,” says Tadese Teklebrhan, Eritrean chairman and co-founder of the NGO Eritrean Human Rights Defenders in The Netherlands. “Everything is controlled by the government. There is no developing infrastructure in the country. There is no transportation, even from the big cities. Economically, it is destroyed. Every young person, they round up and take to prison. Every part of the country has a military prison. The government needs everyone to join military service, which is indefinite.”
He says he fled Eritrea at age 31, after 10 years of military service, because he felt he had no future. He fled through Ethiopia, Sudan, Libya and across the Mediterranean. Such journeys, undertaken by many Eritreans, are difficult, dangerous and sometimes deadly. They may also involve paying large sums of money to human traffickers.
“Indefinite national service is central to the system because it deprives generations of Eritreans of control over their education, employment, family life and future,” says Elizabeth Chyrum, director of the UK-based NGO Human Rights Concern Eritrea.
Decades of enforced disappearances
In his qualification of crimes against humanity, Babiker refers particularly to enforced disappearances. “For three decades, and even before independence in 1991, there is a constant pattern of enforced disappearance across the society, including Muslim and Christian clerics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, politicians and journalists,” he told Justice Info. “So this is systematic and widespread. The Eritrean government continues to arrest people, detain them incommunicado and even deny it, so this is concealment. They conceal even their whereabouts and refuse to acknowledge the deprivation of their liberty. This is at the heart of the definition of enforced disappearance.”
Babiker has never been allowed to visit Eritrea, although he has asked many times. Since his mandate started in 2020, he says he has invested a lot of time developing a network, mostly remotely, among families of people detained, refugees, and those arriving recently elsewhere from Eritrea. Their testimonies are harrowing, says Babiker, and require strict confidentiality, because there is always the fear of reprisals by the regime.
“You meet people like, for example, a family where the father has been in detention for 25 or 30 years,” he told Justice Info. “And when you ask the children, they say we never saw our father. Some people, they don’t even have information about whether their loved one is alive or dead. And I am not talking about one family, I am talking about a lot of people.”
No-one knows how many people have been forcibly disappeared, but it is likely to total many thousands, according to Human Rights Concern Eritrea.
Not safe, even in exile
Babiker also points to transnational repression, “illustrating how Eritrea extends coercive measures across borders to control and silence its citizens abroad”. “The ongoing use of coercive administrative and financial methods, especially through Eritrean embassies and consulates, remains concerning,” says the UN Special Rapporteur in his report. Eritrea is one of the largest generators of refugees in proportion to its population of around 3.7 million. According to the UNHCR, more than 679,000 Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers were recorded globally as of December 2025.
In his report, Babiker says that “the majority of Eritreans who engaged with the Special Rapporteur reported that Eritreans abroad continued to be subject to a 2 per cent ‘Recovery and Rehabilitation Tax’, often referred to as the diaspora tax, and to be required to sign a letter of regret [for abandoning the country] to access essential consular services to obtain, among other things, passports and civil documents including birth and marriage certificates and academic records, and sometimes, to arrange the burial of deceased Eritreans abroad.”
Chyrum says many Eritreans remain afraid even after reaching safety. “They may censor themselves, avoid demonstrations, withdraw from community life or refrain from speaking to journalists and human-rights organizations,” she continues. “Some fear that relatives in Eritrea will be punished for their activities abroad. Others experience financial pressure, reputational attacks, online harassment and exclusion from community or religious networks.”
Teklebrhan says the Eritrean regime has trained agents abroad who try to control and coerce diaspora communities, notably through cultural festivals. “I say the festivals are not cultural festivals, they are really propaganda festivals,” he told Justice Info. “If someone doesn’t participate in the festival or in the collection of money that the regime needs, they isolate that person from the community. The regime has its long arm in every part of the diaspora community.”
Regional and international dynamics
Shifting regional dynamics no doubt plays a part in Eritrea’s maintenance of an open-ended, forced military service because, as Babiker says, it perceives its neighbours as an “existential threat”. This is particularly the case with Ethiopia, which is now sabre-rattling again over access to the Red Sea.
Eritrea has also had clashes with Sudan and Djibouti. It took 19 Djiboutian soldiers in a border skirmish in 2008, 13 of whose fate is still unknown. Djibouti keeps asking about these POWs, but Eritrea provides no information, says Babiker. Relations between the two are not good. With Sudan, however, relations have improved, because the Sudanese government – fighting a civil war – needs an ally to the east.
Other African states, with some exceptions, tend to back Eritrea within the UN Human Rights Council or abstain on votes condemning its appalling human rights record, Babiker told Justice Info.
Why no justice so far?
Clearly, there will be no independent justice in Eritrea at the moment for the regime’s many victims. Back in 2015, Mike Smith of Australia, at the time chairman of a UN human rights inquiry on Eritrea, told Justice Info that “the issue can be taken up by the Security Council, because the Security Council could then refer cases to the International Criminal Court, and then you would have prosecutors from the ICC who would review the evidence and decide if they were going to try and charge individuals”.
This has never happened. Why? “I think there are some difficulties with the route of referral. In particular, if the case were referred, it could be vetoed by some Security Council members,” Babiker told Justice Info. Does he mean China and Russia, and perhaps the US? “Absolutely, the United States as well,” he replies, “because also of the new political dynamics in the region, the Red Sea access, the conflict with Ethiopia and now the conflict in the Middle East.” “Also now, the ICC is already dealing with other cases of referrals, like Sudan and Libya,” he continues, “and they are struggling with these cases.”
Universal jurisdiction?
In his report, Babiker recommends that UN member states “exercise universal jurisdiction over alleged crimes against humanity [in Eritrea] and initiate legal proceedings against individuals responsible for committing international crimes and violating international human rights law and international humanitarian law.”
“Universal jurisdiction could be one of the routes for supra-national prosecution of crimes,” he told Justice Info. “But also, this requires collection of concrete evidence against people who allegedly committed crimes, and willingness of states to pursue these cases.”
He knows of only one attempt to date to bring a universal jurisdiction case. That was in Sweden, in the case of Dawit Isaak, Swedish Eritrean co-owner of the newspaper Setit, who was arrested on September 23, 2001. Like most of those arrested in September and October 2001, Dawit’s whereabouts, health, and legal status remain unknown. “But for strategic reasons, I guess, the case did not move forward,” Babiker continues. “I think it requires the consent of the prosecution office in Sweden, and also these cases are politically sensitive.”
While there has been little accountability so far, there have been cases against Eritrean human traffickers in the Netherlands. This is not enough, but Teklebrhan says it represents some kind of justice for victims. And, he says, some of the traffickers are linked to the regime.
A “dire” situation
Babiker describes the human rights situation in Eritrea as “dire” and getting worse. He says he has seen no improvement during his six-year mandate as Special Rapporteur, and increased tension with Ethiopia may mean more forced recruitment of young people into open-ended military service.
Asked how the situation compares with that in his native country Sudan – engaged in a brutal civil war – he thinks there is more hope for Sudan. “In Sudan the situation is getting worse since the war, since April 2023,” he says. “Before that, Sudan had a great December revolution in 2018, created by strong civil society, some political parties, strong youth groups and strong academia. Still people have their own civic space to resist. The problem with Eritrea is that no civic space exists. No-one has Internet, and life is completely controlled.”
